There is a widespread perception in Israel that Sephardic Jews are more sensible than the rest of us. Sephardim, or "Oriental Jews" as they are commonly if mistakenly called (strictly speaking, the two terms are not interchangeable), tend to shy away from the various manifestations of non-moderation that afflict Ashkenazi or "Western" Jews.

Jimmy Carter's new book - Palestine Peace Not Apartheid - should, by all rights, be headed for the remainder bin. Martin Peretz, editor-in-chief of The New Republic, calls it a "tendentious, dishonest and stupid book."

After Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer posted an anti-Israel polemic on the website of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government - styled as a "research" paper but containing virtually no original research and riddled with extraordinary scholarly lapses - the response of much of the mainstream media in America was admirable.